Greatest startup quote ever

Gabe is actually the mythological creator of Techmeme (and memorandum, WeSmirch.com and BallBug.com) and is one of my favorite “met-through-blogging” friends. I’ve blogged about him often over the years and am always glad to see him receive recognition for his dedication to developing a “gesture-driven” news tracking service. I’ve enjoyed every conversation I’ve had with Gabe over the years, as he is always patient with my questions about his “algorithms.” He’s patient, because he knows I have absolutely no clue what he’s talking about a lot of the time, but he still labors to make it understandable to me.

There’s another great quote in the interview:

“The way I view it, Techmeme is gamed continuously because the real world is gamed continuously: Gamed in the sense that bloggers have always traded links and various other gestures of attention, sometimes through unspoken agreements, sometimes not. This was going on before my sites arrived, though these kinds of things can affect Techmeme. It’s hard to say how much. Ultimately, people will read Techmeme if they find it useful or entertaining, so I just need to maintain and improve Techmeme’s utility. Some of my efforts to accomplish that involve “anti-gaming” measures, but most of my efforts involve other things.

As with anything that grows in influence and popularity, Techmeme is the focus of a continuous debate among some who hang out on the tech blogosphere. However, I appreciate Gabe’s ability to tune out the noise and continue to stay focused on improving what he can improve. I like his attitude about his product: You’ll find it either useful, or not. No one will make you use it.

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Launched in August, 2000, RexBlog.com is the personal blog of Rex Hammock, founder/ceo of Hammock Inc., a customer media and marketing services company founded in 1991 in Nashville. Rex is also founder/helper-in-chief of SmallBusiness.com.(...)